


Small Spores of Destiny

by Leia_Blaze



Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Does it count as a crossover if no character actually meet and they are in the same universe, Gen, Original Flavor, genfic, i think so, takes place post Scorpion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 03:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leia_Blaze/pseuds/Leia_Blaze
Summary: The Voyager crew discover a method of getting home that challenges their minds and souls. Will the so-called "Spore Drive" work?





	Small Spores of Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> So I kind of wrote this out of pettiness. A lot of people say "Why is the Spore Drive not used in the future? PLOT HOLE" and used Voyager as an example. Well, if you watch the show, you should know why. So what started as me being petty turned into my first fanfic in nearly a year.
> 
> Oops.
> 
> For those wondering what I've been doing, I've been planning an original fic I'l post on Wordpress/Wattpad. See ya soon!

When they first started, the meetings didn't have names. Once per day, Captain Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager would gather up her senior staff and ask them a simple question, the same one. 

"How do we get home?"

At first, it was basic solutions. Modify the warp engine, find some new way of going faster than the Warp barrier, interface with a Borg transwarp conduit. Janeway kept a personal PADD on her of them, jotted down in a list. Soon, they grew more abstract, more unhelpful. When Tom Paris was first added to the meetings, he'd joked out "Maybe we should try praying? I don't know who to, though. Does God exist in the Delta Quadrant?"

Janeway noted down "Pray to God/Kahless." She was a committed atheist, like most in Starfleet, but stranger things had happened.

By the end of the first year, they had gone from once a day to once a week. Then to once a month. After year 4, there hadn't been a meeting since the time they brought in Neelix to give some ideas. Somehow, his suggestion was worse than praying. Katherine had given up on finding a way home quickly long before then, and afterwards quietly put the PADD in a storage unit. The hard way, it seemed, was the only way. Voyager was going to become a generation ship, it's crew to be caregivers, scientists, and in the rare case, soldiers.

Then Seven of Nine came aboard.

Seven wasn't a part of senior staff. Heck, she wasn't even part of Starfleet. She was a liberated Borg Drone, human and observant, but still not Starfleet. Janeway wasn't even sure if it was legal to give her a uniform. But she was a person with experiences in technologies that the Federation hadn't even touched. Transwarp, cryostasis, feats of cybernetics that made an artificial heart seem passe. It was a miracle, and Janeway had noticed an uptick in optimism among some members of the crew. Conversations about what they were going to do when they got home skyrocketed, and the councilors had reported a few more smiles going around.

And so, a few months after Seven first decided to use her regeneration pod interface as her regular outerwear, Katherine called her entire senior staff, plus Seven of Nine and Tom Paris, to her ready room. As they sat down, Janeway took a tentative sip of her coffee. The replicators never got it right, but that was okay. 

"I have a question for you all. We have been doing this for four years. We have been looking for a new way to jump across the Delta Quadrant back to Earth, and it hasn't gotten us anywhere. I thought I would die on this ship." She let that last sentence hang, just a bit, and took out her PADD that was put in storage. "We have a new crew member, one who we can bounce ideas off of. She has studied Federation history and technology faster than any of us can imagine. So I'm going to ask her, and all of you in this room, one thing. How do we get home?"

Ideas began to be tossed around like Pyrethian Squares participants. Stable wormhole generator! A new form of FTL! Find a way to get into Subspace! As the discussion quieted down, and it looked like it was going to end the same way all of them did, Seven stated "Why not build a spore drive?" 

The discussion halted quickly, looks of confusion darting across every other person in the room. Harry was the one to break the silence.

"What's a spore drive?" he asked.

"I think I read about this," Tom said, the gears in his head turning. "During the Four Year War, the conflict with the Klingons, there were rumors of some new kind of warp drive that some ships were equipped with. But I never followed up on them. Most people I knew thought it was just scuttlebutt."

"Those so called rumors were true, and not butts, scuttled or otherwise." Seven of Nine said, her voice keeping the same staccato monotone she always had. Torres had to suppress a laugh.

"Stardate 7412.6. While most others in Starfleet Command were dealing with the aftermath of the V'ger incident, Rear Admiral Sylvia Tilly-Burnham quietly released many classified details concerning the Four Year War and other surrounding incidents concerning the Starfleet vessel USS Discovery, NCC-1031. Included with certain Black Ops details was something unique to the Crossfield class. It's called the Spore Drive and its... unique. But possibly pertinent to Voyager."

"What do you mean by 'unique?'" Torres asked, raising an eyebrow that would have made Tuvok jealous. She crossed her arms, her mind already working on a thousand ways to solve the puzzle to be put in front of her.

"The Spore Drive is technically a form of biotechnology, in the sense that it uses a living component. Stamets original notes and thesis are... difficult, as I'm not connected to the Collective to help offload and delegate sections that I am not able comprehend. But as far as I can tell, it involves the 'Mycelial Network,' a sub-layer of our universe made up of spores and fungi small enough to interact with atoms. According to his notes, and recorded evidence, it was possible to jump across the galaxy using it."

"How fast is this jump?" Janeway's attention had long ago been caught, and her old Starfleet Academy major in microbiology was surfacing in the back of her mind.

"Near instantaneous. When it was under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, a jump in the Beta Quadrant of 51,450 light years, which would have taken 150 years at maximum warp, was achieved in 1.5 seconds."

The room fell silent. Nobody dared speak, and dare kill the spirit of hope that had filled the ready room with a stray remark. It Janeway that broke the silence, in a soft, unbelieving whisper.

"Home. We can go home. Just like that." 

The room exploded into cheers and laughter. Tom tried to pull Torres into a kiss, but she pushed back just a bit with a smile.  The Doctor smiled in his usual way, Harry was close to tears, and Neelix was half ready to dance into a jig. Tuvok, however, remained calm, and when the celebrations calmed down, asked a question in a calm, measured voice.

"Miss Nine, firstly, thank you for the information. However, I feel some of the celebrations are a bit too soon. Tell me, why are we not all traveling on Starships powered by... mushrooms one hundred years later?"

"There are a few... issues." Seven motioned to the screen at the end of the room, and used a PADD to bring up charts. "The USS Glenn was one of Discovery's fellow Crossfield classes. She was destroyed attempting Speirein 900, and the further the distance, the more uncertain the result. It's based off quantum mechanics, intersects with biology, and is very difficult to understand, even for me."

"Was Discovery destroyed by the use of the drive?" Torres said, sitting back down.

"No, though by the time of her retirement it had been converted to an engineering workspace. The reason they stopped using it, and the the reason it hasn't been used, is the difficulty finding a navigator."

The image moved to a... thing. Janeway saw a thing. It was some sort of bear, like an old confectionary, but it had vicious claws and a face that was nothing more than a tube with razor sharp teeth lining it.

"The Glenn crew named it Ripper. It is a Tardigrade, also known as a water bear. Normally, they are microscopic. Ripper was an exception, and he was the first of two navigators for the Spore Drive. He was the one who would find a way through the mycinial network. After the war he was... released."

"Any reason why?" Harry said.

"Michael Burnham described it in an interview as 'horrifying.' She and Stamets had discovered that it was slowly killing the Tardigrade."

"You said Ripper was the first Navigator," Janeway said, her inquisitive hat on. "Who was the second?"

"That would be Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, the person widely credited as the creator of the Spore Drive." The image on screen changed again, to a man, presumably Stamets, sitting in a chair. His arm opened up, physically opened, to reveal a port, that a needle was soon stuck into.

"He managed to navigate Discovery for several more jumps until the end of his career in Starfleet.  He mixed his own DNA with that of the Tardigrade-"

"I think we've heard enough."

The whole room turned and looked at Janeway, their faces ranging from confusion to disappointment. Torres and Chakotay knew exactly what was about to happen.

"Seven, thank you for telling us about this, and I apologize to the crew for getting their hopes up. But Starfleet regulation, and Federation law, prohibit the use of genetic experiments. I would love to-"

"Captain," Tuvok said, his tone remaining neutral. "I have a question. For years now we have been searching for a way to get us home quicker; nearly every single one them either did not work or had complications too great to overcome. The Spore Drive works. Why not use it?"

"Because like it or not, we are still a Starfleet ship. As such, we are under their laws."

"Besides, Tuvok," Harry said with a sigh, "I don't want to get back to Earth and immediately get arrested. Right Tom?"

Tom Paris didn't say anything. Instead, he looked up, right towards Janeway.

"Captain..." he started, slow blinks, before putting his hands together, in front of his face.

Janeway sighed and sat down. "Any other suggestions?"

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Janeway sat in her ready room, staring at the viewscreen. Stars flew past at 1,516 times the speed of light, and each one Janeway wanted to reach out to, explore. They were in uncharted space, quite literally going where no one had gone before. Under any other circumstance, in any timeline where she wasn't trying to jump through the universe as fast as possible in some vain hope that she would see Earth one more time before she died, she would be reaching out to each of them. 

What is orbiting that brown dwarf, she wondered? A civilization that discovered a cure to the Irumodic Syndrome? A primitive tribe discovering fire? A future power player in the galaxy to rival The Dominion? 

Someone who could get us home?

Every star that Janeway saw was an opportunity, an opportunity missed and discarded as casually as her morning mugs of coffee. Because of her own choice, they had taken a potentially beautiful new step in the history of the Federation and turned it into a race home. Sure, they stopped for anomalies, interesting things to discover. Stop for a day or two to examine a pulsar or a binary star, or a planet in stable orbit around a black hole. But their focus was getting home, returning to safety out of the unknown. 

Janeway sighed and looked at the replicator. "Coffee, four shots of espresso."

"That is unwise," it replied, and for a second Katherine thought she was being condescended to by a computer. "That much caffeine may have an adverse effect on your mind's ability to-"

"Override," Janeway barked, halfway ready to slap a voice. 

The cup materialized and Janeway grabbed at it. She was drawing it to her lips, not even letting it cool down, when the door chimed. "Please let there be an anomaly," she whispered, before she gave a resigned "Come in!"

In walked Paris and Torres, out of breath and nearly falling over each other.. "The gel packs!" Tom and B'elanna yelled at the same time. Paris had a look of revelation on his face, and neither he nor Torres had their jackets on, only the undershirt. 

"Before I send you both back to your quarters and tell you to get into uniform," Janeway said, nursing her coffee like it was a potion of life, "Please, give me some context."

"For the spore drive," Paris wheezed, "Torres and I were... talking, and we realized we can turn the ship into a navigator for the Mycelial Network. It's technically biological, and if we could find a way to modify it to work with the network..."

"We'd be able to figure out how to jump without the need of a sentient navigator!"

Janeway stood there for a moment, before setting the coffee down and moving behind her desk. She sat down, looking back at the screen. A thousand stars flew by every minute, every second a chance lost to find something wonderful. A drive that could take them home instantaneously would be perfect. But it could return them just the same, let them go over the trails they missed, discover those wonderful things.

To boldly go where nobody had gone before.

"Let me see those plans."

_______________________________________________________________________

"I need those plasma tubes redirected already!" Torres shouted, checking her PADD for the fourth time in a minute. Stamet's design was... unique, to say the least. The spore drive was designed for the Crossfield first, with the understanding that it would be adapted to other ships. But, like the holograms of that era, it wasn't something that was future proof. Beyond the moral implications of it, the spore drive was something incredibly difficult to build on a ship not specifically made for it, like the Discovery or the Glenn. There was an attempt to retrofit on other ships during the war, but they were never completed. 

"Bio-Neural gel packs are ready, we're ready to launch as soon as we're given green." A PO said, carrying a thing that contained a spore that did... something. The whole time, B'elanna felt as if she were building a jigsaw puzzle that she didn't know the final picture of. It was a lot of science that barely made sense, felt as if it was scribbled down in a fever dream. But it worked, they had recorded evidence that everything about it worked. 

There was no way to simulate it, but that was a risk the Captain was willing to make. Chakotav said his usual spiel ("Compulsive, irresponsible, risky") but still managed to let it go by. Only Torres was  Even the simulators for the transwarp shuttle were a lot of guesswork, and they didn't manage to guess that Tom would turn into a salamander. But there was a difference between a shuttle and a starship. Torres had felt she was assigned to make something out of literal magic.

"I mean it's literal mushrooms! We're going to jump across mushrooms!" she had complained to Seven in the mess hall. Neelix was serving an Andorial Borscht, but Seven had chosen Nutrient Supplement #8. In many ways, it was probably a better choice.

"It's proven to work," Seven said, the paste jiggling on her spoon. Torres had a try of it once, and discovered exactly what nothing tasted like. 

"No, it was proven to work. It worked on a starship designed to house it, from the ground up. We're not even following the blueprints, technically, and who knows what's going to happen when we're even in the network, and maybe-"

"If the changes worry you so much," Seven said, not even looking up from her "food," "why did you help Paris suggest them to the Captain?"

Torres sighed, and coughed down another spoonful of Borscht. "Because I'm so damn sick of the Delta Quadrant. I'm sick of anomalies, I'm sick of getting kidnapped, I am certainly sick of this cooking. I just... I'm done, you know? I sometimes feel like I'm running on fumes, keeping this ship together with duct tape and WD40. I just want to be done, go back to the Beta Quadrant, and retire someplace sunny. Risa, I think. Just a nice house on the beach with nothing but the ocean." And Tom.

Torres looked back up from her soup and saw Seven had left, now talking to an NCO about why Starfleet was said to used to have gold uniforms when they were clearly green. 

"Everything's ready," someone said to her, snapping her out of her head. She took a look around the engine room, her engine room. She might never step foot in here again if this worked, either out of wanting to get away or getting arrested for the whole "Maquis Agent" thing. Maybe she should give a speech or a goodbye, or something. This room had been her life for five years, and there was a good chance that in a few moments it would all be gone. She should say something, anything.

Torres sighed and hit her combadge. "Spore drive is ready and operational. We can jump as soon as you give the order, Captain."

She was never good at speeches.

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

"All systems primed, bio-neural packs steady," Harry Kim said, his usual sweat covered face practically dripping.

"Black Alert," Jane way ordered, holding onto the arms of the chair as if her life depended on it. In some scenarios, it might actually have been. 

"Jumping now." 

Tom pressed a single button on his console, and for a second, the world was gone. For the briefest microsecond, the world was an ocean of blue light, the viewscreen displaying a world so wonderful, so transcendent that it made everything fade.

And then Voyager burst back into normal space, and everything went straight to hell.

The exit wasn't graceful. Nobody was killed when they returned to normal space, it was safer an exit than the Glenn had. But it wasn't a pretty sight. 

"We have hull breaches!" Harry yelled, the red alert klaxon blaring louder than it ever had before. "The left nacelle is not responding. I... I think it's gone, Captain!"

"What do you mean gone?" Janeway shouted back, before she was thrust out of her chair suddenly and violently. The sensor console exploded near Tuvok's face, and he was tackled out of the way by Seven. 

"It's disintegrated," Seven said, pulling herself up to the railing. "It is no longer functioning because it no longer exists."

"Deactivate everything! Get the gel pack replacements out of storage, we need to purge the whole system!"

________________________________________________________________________

The ship was found by a Talaxian trader, far off the normal trade route. Initially, zhe claimed her as a form of salvage, that she owned the right to it under some treaty between two empires that Janeway had never heard of. The site of Tuvok folding his arms was enough to get a tow to a nearby starport for repairs.

The spore drive was worthless to them. The ship wasn't built for it. The bio-neural packs were versatile, strong, but they weren't built for something like this. In the end, their adventure to the network was going to cost them a week in spacedock, getting a vital part of their ship rebuilt by complete strangers. 

Torres was vital in the process of making sure it was built right. She had managed to find something wrong in every part, right down to how they were installing panels on the hull. "The paint swatches don't match! How can you see in ultraviolet and not tell the difference between neutronium grey and titanium grey! Gah!"

The port was grungy, something that a person more high and mighty than Janeway would call a hive of scum and villainy. She had to negotiate some food from a person who wanted to trade for locks of her hair. Fae're was a collector of things that came from people, and proudly showed off a Hirogen's severed head preserved in a tank. 

In her quarters, still under emergency power, she made a log entry. One of several hundred over the course of her voyage home, but most of those didn't sting of bitter defeat. 

"It's a formula, a way we kept ourselves busy. Find some new hope for us to get home sooner, and have it snatched away. Because we have to destroy it, or it's too dangerous, or because we will turn into lizards, or something. This was just another step in that. But I read once that not every cage is a prison, not every loss eternal. We are not stuck here forever. We are here now, we will be here a long time, but we will make it home. One way or another, this loss is not eternal. 

Computer. End log."

 


End file.
